Listen: Let’s say you and I went back in time–I mean way back, like 1989, when parachute pants where a thing–nobody would believe us if we told them about this Magical Box Full of Interwebs.
Random person in this thing we used to call The Mall: “So I plug into this box–“
“Plugging in is optional. You can do it wirelessly, too.”
Person: “Sure, Jan, sure. Okay, I have this box, and it connects me to anyplace else on the planet, like Japan and Sweden and Iceland?”
“Yes. And you can watch videos of cats knocking things off counters, read personal diaries of random people, and check out libraries of priceless knowledge like Knitting Hats for Cats.”
At this point, the Random Person would say this is a scam, and we’d have to admit their 1989 Mac or Dell couldn’t actually connect to all that stuff yet, because the internet didn’t quite exist. But soon it would, and they’d be so so so far ahead of their neighbors it wouldn’t even be funny.
Today, the internet grows exponentially fast, just like space-time, so quickly that unless your Not-So-Magical box can keep up, funny cat videos will take forever to load and whatever online game you enjoy will lag so hard that it’s like you’re standing still and everybody else has super-speed, and it’ll be even more annoying than a Flash episode, though not as annoying as a Flash movie.
If you want slow internet, head to the garage and open random boxes until you find a dial-up modem, connect that thing to what they called a telephone line (they lived in walls) and start making the sounds: bee-bop, bee-BOOP-doo-doo doo, screech, SCREECH, ka-boing ka boing ka-booooinggggg.
You think I’m making that up. Nope. Totally accurate.
Or give that dial-up modem to the Museum of Dead Technology and buy this Magical Box Full of Interwebs, because reasons. Here, I have many.
- It is brand new and still in the box. Never touched, caressed, or even gone on a date. It is the virgin olive oil of technology.
- Despite it’s power and purity, this box is on sale, because I am not a giant corporation, and somewhat kind, and already have my own Magical Box Full of Interwebs that’s working just fine.
- Economists have a term of buying new products at a discount: “The Principle of This Fell Off the Back of a Truck.” Except it did not fall off a truck, and was not liberated, or misappropriated, or stolen. It’s simply surplus.
- You do not have an unlimited supply of money. It is finite, and keeps shrinking when you do silly things like pay the mortgage or the rent or buy the little ones shoes and such. Saving money rocks. Have no monies stinks. You like to rock.
- Slow internet is painful and wrong. It is a sin against the sky gods, who the Magical Box of Full of Interwebs communicates with when bored, and you don’t want to anger them, because they will fly down from orbit and swap your semi-fast box of internet with a dialup modem if you piss them off.
- You probably have other human beings in your household, people that you love or at least tolerate, and they may use up all your bandwidth watching Friends reruns or obscure anime stuff with subtitles while all you want to do is find more funny cat videos, and this could prevent that bandwidth logjam. Or you all could turn off the screens and hang out together playing Exploding Kittens with the kiddos downing juice boxes and the grownups having a little wine tasting. Go wild.
- This is a Nighthawk AC1900 WiFi Cable Modem Router with 24×8 channel bonding and speeds up to 960 Mbps. If that’s what you want, I have it, let’s make a deal. If you want a MorningSparrow DC200 Sluggy Slug Dialup Modem with speeds of 26 kilobytes per second and such, I do not have it and would not sell it.
- Nobody writes checks anymore, and if you want to pay the bills and not get evicted to live in your Toyota Sienna swagger wagon, you gotta pay for physical things virtually via your bank’s app plus Venmo, Paypal, and ten other stupid things with ten other stupid passwords and usernames you WILL forget but can’t save in a Word file because some hacker in Moscow will find that thing and steal all your monies.
PRICE
This thing costs $194, new, in physical stores or online.
I will take $90 in U.S. dollars OR accept trade for things that would be useful in any sort of apocalypse, like food with a 25-year-old shelf life, but not cans of dog food, because I don’t believe Mel Gibson ate real dog food in Road Warrior, and even if he did, I’m still not down with that.
The Red Pen of Doom 